Tape drive that used to work... argh!

budzynm · 02-22-2004, 06:03 PM

Greetings,

I'm runing RH 7.0 with a my own rolled kernel: 2.4.21

I have an external SCSI tape drive that has been working fine. During boot it all appears to mount correctly:

ACARD AEC-671X PCI Ultra/W SCSI-3 Host Adapter: 0 IO:1040, IRQ:11.
ID: 1 CONNER CTT8000-S 1.17
ID: 7 Host Adapter
scsi0 : ACARD AEC-6710/6712/67160 PCI Ultra/W/LVD SCSI-3 Adapter Driver V2.6+ac
Vendor: CONNER Model: CTT8000-S Rev: 1.17
Type: Sequential-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02
st: Version 20020805, bufsize 32768, wrt 30720, max init. bufs 4, s/g segs 16
Attached scsi tape st0 at scsi0, channel 0, id 1, lun 0

I've been running a weekly cron job to back everything up. But now, the cron job has started to fail.

When I do:
mt -f /dev/st0 status

I get:
/dev/st0: Input/output error

I'm at a loss. I've restarted the machine and everything appears to mount and load correctly. I've searched the logs and nothing else appears amiss. Is the external drive shot? I've been using the device fine for months until this started happening.

Yes, the external device has power and the cables are plugged in. And, admittingly, the tape drive is probably at least 7 years old (maybe it's time it when to hardware heaven).

Anybody have any suggestions? Anyplace I can look?

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

jailbait · 02-22-2004, 06:36 PM

"Anybody have any suggestions?"

Back when I had a tape drive I had to clean the head about twice a year or I would get I/O errors. I used rubbing alcohol and a Qtip.

Also after many years a tape drive can die because the tape has worn a groove in the head. Check the head to see if there is a groove noticible to the naked eye.

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